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A Book by its Cover

When I was twelve, I found a paperback book jammed into a clump
of chicory in a vacant lot. The cover was gone and the front
page soiled, so I had no clue to the contents, but as an omnivorous
reader who devoured everything from Dickens to Shakespeare to the
backs of cereal boxes, I naturally opened it and began to
read. I soon discovered that it was a pornographic novel,
apparently intended for men.

This was in 1960; porn of that quaint variety, consisting
entirely of text, must surely be unavailable now except as
collectables. Later I learned that a friend of my mother’s, a
professor and a science fiction novelist, had once survived a lean
spell by writing some of it. He said he was set to typing in
a room full of other hacks, with a certain amount of freedom as to
the characters’ names, occupations and personalities (or lack
thereof) but required to adhere absolutely to a list of the
frequency with which various sex acts should recur.

That vacant lot was a long meadow overgrown with flowering
weeds, bordered on one side by an extremely noisy and busy street;
my brother and sister and I found it pleasanter to walk through it
than beside it. lf my sibs accompanied me to the store, we
were all children together, running and shouting, wishing on
dandelions, pressing the rust red beads of pigweed flowers to our
skin and exclaiming, “Look! I have measles!” But if I
was alone, I allowed myself a quarter-hour with the book, tucking
it back into the chicory when I was done. Heaven knows
my mother was used to me dilly-dallying; if I hadn’t had that book
stashed in the weeds, I would have taken one from home to read as I
walked, and so been even slower in completing my errands.

Every time I returned expected to find the book gone,
but it was always still there, and in the Midwest midsummer there
was no rain to dissolve this pulp fiction into literal pulp, so
nothing interfered with these sessions. Frankly, though, I was
bored by much of it, and took to skipping long passages. It
was badly written, whch mattered to me already, and the sexual
incidents struck me as both ludicrous and grotesque. I do,
however, still remember the conclusion. After the
hard-drinking protagonist had enjoyed various encounters to console
himself while trying to win back his estranged wife, the wife
arrived on his doorstep one rainy night in a dripping trenchcoat,
high heels, fishnet stockings and—as she soon revealed to
him—nothing else. “Now, darling!” she cried. “Darling,
now!”

As I said, the book’s cover was gone. I can only speculate
as to what sort of illustration it might have had—and whether it
would have drawn me in or repelled me: probably the
former. I was a late bloomer, who didn’t hit puberty until
the following year. Had I been older. . . well, it might have
attracted me—as long as I was alone.

The degree of sexual arousal in response to visual stimuli is
subject to gender differences and cultural factors—but not as
much as the degree to which that response is acknowledged.

It has long been accepted that response to visual sex-related
stimuli is strong in men and weak in women. This belief,
supported by scientific studies, informs the design of advertising
campaigns and has far too often been employed to justify male
rapists and blame their victims.

But women increasingly refuse to buy the idea that rape is
caused by provocative clothing. Some have organized
“slutwalks” in which women parade holding signs reading “It’s a
dress, not a yes.” and “This is what I was wearing when I was
raped.” In fact, psychology now recognizes that rape often
has little if anything to do with sexual desire, and everything to
do with the will to dominate, humiliate or terrorize the
victim. The view of men as the helpless playthings of their
lustful urges has lost credence.

At the same time, studies show that women respond far more
strongly to sexual imagery than is generally known. Though
women’s self-reported interest in sexual images is much
lower than men’s, women’s brains actually respond faster and more
strongly to images of sexual poses and activities than to images
portraying immediate danger, long before they have consciously
processed what they are seeing. This suggests that women are
self-censoring in response to cultural standards–and those
standards are changing.

The best evidence for changing standards may be found
in steamy romances’ cover art. These books want to
be judged by their covers. Explicit sex inside is promised
not just by half-clad couples embracing passionately but
increasingly by photos of bare male torsos, often without any faces
to distract the eye from the gleaming musculature. Romance
novels are by far the fastest growing genre in e-publishing, and
it’s been suggested that this is because an e-book reader does not
expose women’s choice of reading matter as steamy paperback cover
art does. But those steamy covers are still getting printed
too, and sold, and even on the e-book sites, those cover images are
still the guide to what lies within.

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3 thoughts on “A Book by its Cover”

HA!! I too found a pornographic novel when the folks and I were out picnicking at Seward Park. It was in very bad shape, minus the cover and the first 30 pages, as well as the last few (I have no idea how it ended). I have no memory of the title. The lead guy was some hippie who apparently screwed anything that moved. I was very interested in this book and kept it and read it for some time, then I got bored with it and tossed it. Totally parallel stories!

Kids are curious, and if they are readers, they’ll read anyghing – as long as it holds their attention. But they are merciless to anything that bores them, and I think writing about sex does bore kids, no matter how sophisticated they think they are.